The Darkling Tide Read Online Free Page B

sound, but from somewhere deep in the forest she could hear the melodic strumming of a harp.
    “It’s coming from that way,” Leona said, pointing to the right of the path. Her feet took her closer to the edge of the trail.
    “What are you doing?” Abagail asked her rushing after Leona.
    Daphne came fluttering back and placed herself between Leona and the warding. She swatted at the pixie, to get her out of the way. “The music, it’s so lovely,” Leona said.
    “Great, they can’t get on the trail, so they are going to lure us off?” Rorick asked.
    “Leona,” Abagail said, pulling on her sister’s arm. Leona tried to shrug her off. It didn’t work. “Listen to me, you can’t go out there, that’s what the darklings want.”
    “But what if it’s a person?” Leona wondered.
    “It’s not,” Rorick told her, coming to stand beside the sisters. “Who would be out in the middle of a darkling forest with a harp in such cold conditions?”
    Abagail had to confess the music was very alluring. It infused her senses with desire, and she wanted to see where the sound came from. What gifted fingers created the song? There was a sense that if she joined with the music then all of this would be over.
    Helvegr. Came the word, but it didn’t matter now. If she were just to get to the music the shadow plague would be a distant memory. She wouldn’t have to struggle with it any longer. She’d be free.
    The harp music drew her on, and she dropped her sister’s arm. Abagail glanced over at Rorick and noticed that he, too, was having a change of mind.
    “Maybe it’s not all that bad,” he said.
    The music twanged once, and that stirred something in Abagail. A memory of something, but it didn’t matter. Daphne swirled before her face, but she paid the pixie no mind. The fog was lifting, and as it parted the forest seemed to come to life.
    The snow faded away and in its wake was left verdant, velvety moss covered ground. The trees were tall and shrugged up toward the warm sun. There were no shadows in the tree, but countless birds all singing their mating songs. There were no wolves, but there were fauns and fairies chasing one another around.
    All of it waited for her, just off the edge of the trail.
    All she had to do was exit the trail and she would be with them. She wouldn’t have to worry about the harbingers any longer. There were no darklings to consider. There was just the music.
    “It can’t be real,” she heard herself say, but even as she said it, she knew she didn’t mean it. There existed nothing outside of the music.
    Her glove fell off from her hand and she reached forward. Her hand was cramping, but even through the pain she only had a mind for the music. The pain didn’t matter. All she had to do was bring down the warding and the music would be with them.
    “You can do it Abagail,” Leona said, her eyes dreamy, far away. “Just a little bit. You’ve fractured the trail before.”
    The memory swam up to the surface of her mind. The darkling wyrd having blasted from her hand had splintered the warding, cracked it and allowed two darklings through. Even as she remembered seeing the shadows slip through the shield and onto the trail, the memory changed.
    No, not shadows, radiant beings. Didn’t they help us?
    The memory was hazy. Had they been shadows, or had they been elves?
    Her hand began to glow golden. She could feel the Waking Eye rousing to the surface of her palm. Abagail felt the bite and knew that the power was coming to her, knew that the darkling wyrd was working over the surface of her palm.
    Rorick and Leona gathered around her, waiting for the power to burst forth, collapse the protective boundaries of Singer’s Trail, and unite them with the music that wafted through the living forest before them.
    The Fey Forest, in all its splendor, what it must be like without all of the snow, without the endless winter. It was another thought that seemed out of place. There wasn’t any